Iron Britannia

by Anthony Barnett

  At this point it may be pertinent to return to the analogy with Gaullism. Churchillism, as I have tried to show, is not a coherent ideology. Rather, it is an ideological matrix within which contending classes are caught, none of them being the ‘true’ exemplar since each is in some way equally constitutive. (Michael Foot was probably flabbergasted and bitter when Margaret Thatcher donned Churchill’s mantle.) Gaullism, on the other hand, developed as an ideologically specific class force. It combatted Communist domination of the resistance movement and was not structurally penetrated by, or indebted to, the organized working class. This allowed the Gaullists a far greater confidence in their exercise of state power. Dirigisme and extensive nationalization were essential for the modernization of French capital, and under Gaullist colours the national could comfortably dominate over the social. In contrast, the legacy of Churchillism has been twofold: not only did it prevent the emergence of a nationally hegemonic Brandt/Schmidt type of social democracy, but it also blocked the Right from creating a dynamic party of national capital.

  Andrew Gamble has distinguished three main schools of explanation for Britain’s decline since 1945, and notes that there are Marxist as well as bourgeois variants of each. Respectively, these are: (1) the UK’s over-extended international involvement and military expenditure; (2) archaic institutions of government including the party system; (3) the ‘overloading’ of the state by welfare expenditures, compounded by the entrenched position of the unions.20 Each is partially true, but instead of arguing about which is the root cause of decline, we can note here that Churchillism fathered them all. Churchillism ensured that all parties were committed to a British military and financial role that was spun world wide; it conserved the Westminster system when it should have been transformed; it brought the unions into the system and initiated a welfare-state never efficiently dominated by social democracy. In short, Churchillism ensured the preservation of the Parliamentary Nation and thus Westminster’s allegiance to a moment of world greatness that was actually the moment when the greatness ceased. Churchill’s National Coalition ensured an astonishing recuperation, one that left the patient structurally disabled for the future and obsessed with magical resurrection from the dead.

  Notes

  1 Keith Middlemas, Politics in Industrial Society, London 1979, p. 376.

  2 Later it included Communists although on a temporary basis, and also the ‘British Road to Socialism’, received its local inspiration from Churchillism, while the CPGB kept the ‘Great’ in its formal party name.

  3 Paul Addison, The Road to 1945, London 1977, p. 100.

  4 As above, p. 62. Addison’s judgement in full is that the National Coalition resulted from ‘the public shipwreck of a Conservative administration, and the corollary was that Labour were not in reality given office: they broke in and took it, on terms of moral equality’.

  5 This mimicked Leo Amery’s famous parliamentary intervention on 2 September 1939, literally the eve of World War II, when he shouted across to the acting Labour leader Arthur Greenwood after. Chamberlain had failed to announce an ultimatum for war: ‘Speak for England, Arthur!’. A.J.P. Taylor, English History, 1914-1945, Oxford 1965, p. 452.

  6 Harold Wilson’s father was a deputy election agent for Winston Churchill in 1908 when Churchill was standing as a liberal. Patricia Murray, Margaret Thatcher, London 1980, p. 94.

  7 Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-45, New York 1979, p. 163.

  8 In 1938, 40% of all Latin American imports came from Britain, by 1948 only 8%, Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War, London 1969, p. 493. Kolko is very clear on Anglo-American rivalry.

  9 Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 3, London 1950, Chapter 24. For a discussion of the arguments this caused within British imperialist circles, see Wm. Roger Lewis, Imperialism at Bay 1941-1945, Oxford 1977, Chapter 6. Clause 5 of the Atlantic Charter provides an important addition for any discussion of Churchillism. While Roosevelt and Churchill were locked in their political struggle, the British War Cabinet back in London, under Attlee’s chairmanship and at Bevin’s suggestion, proposed a further clause to the draft they were sent. This would proclaim improved labour standards, economic advancement and social security for all people. The supreme leaders agreed, but significantly rejected the suggestion that the ‘abolition of unemployment and want’ become a general war aim. Alan Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, vol 2, London 1967, p. 69. Bullock adds, ‘It is impossible to read the Atlantic Charter now without a sense of disillusion, but at the time it raised great hopes. To Bevin it was a cause of some satisfaction that he had succeeded in getting both the British and American Governments to accept in principle the concern with the economic and social problems which he believed ought to figure as prominently as political factors in the post-war settlement.’

  10 But as Angus Calder points out, ‘When Britain “stood alone”, she stood on the shoulders of several hundred million Asians’. Peoples War, London 1971, p. 22.

  11 Middlemas, p. 272. His thoughtful study is welcome for its serious theoretical approach and sustained mastery of the primary sources—a rare combination. Its limitation, perhaps, is that Middlemas does not concern himself with the independent role of the City and overseas interests in the extended crisis of the British polity. See also, Leo Panitch, ‘Trade Unions and the Capitalist State’, NLR 125, January 1981, p. 27.

  12 Calder. p. 609.

  13 Churchill, vol. 4, p. 541.

  14 Bullock, p. 226.

  15 Calder, pp. 613-14.

  16 Martin Pugh, The Making of Modern British Politics, 1867-1939, Oxford 1982, p. 296.

  17 Tom Nairn. ‘The Crisis of the British State’. NLR 132, November 1981. p. 40.

  18 Addison, p. 116.

  19 Henry Pelling, Britain and the Second World War, London 1970. p. 288.

  20 Andrew Gamble, Britain in Decline, London 1981, pp. 24-26.

  4 Thatcherism

  ON 3 JULY 1982, the Prime Minister spoke to her first major rally in the aftermath of the Falklands battle. Some 5,000 Conservative supporters gathered at Cheltenham racecourse, and Thatcher delivered one of the most remarkable speeches in recent British politics. She gave her interpretation of the True Meaning of the war in the South Atlantic. She announced that its ‘spirit’ would now be applied at home. The example of the task force was its professional leadership and its clear hierarchy of rank. ‘Every man had his own task.’ ‘All were equally valuable—each was differently qualified.’ This was a lesson not only for management—who should emulate the ‘commanders in the field’—but also for the train drivers (then on strike) and the hospital ancillary workers engaged in industrial action. A lean, union-free, ‘professional’ economy led with martial élan was Margaret Thatcher’s vision. For her it was more than a vision, the reality of it was already tangible.

  Once, she said, there were some ‘who thought that we could no longer do the great things which we once did’. Perhaps there were even some in that very Tory audience who had had ‘secret fears … that Britain was no longer the nation that had built an Empire and ruled a quarter of the world. Well they were wrong. The lesson of the Falklands is that Britain has not changed.’ Other people might have thought that this was precisely the problem: that the UK had not changed while the rest of the world had. The fainthearts! No, a veritable renaissance was under way: ‘We have to see that the spirit of the South Atlantic—the real spirit of Britain—is kindled not only by war but can now be fired by peace … the spirit has stirred and the nation has begun to assert itself.’ (See p. 149.)

  Some days later, the polls registered Conservative party support running at close to 50% of the electorate with the rest divided between Labour and the Social Democrats, figures which promised Thatcher future re-election.

  Thatcher’s South Atlantic programme may appear implausible. But the less such aspirations are taken seriously, the more likely they are to succeed. Thatcher’s prospectus capped a s
ignificant expression of opinion that began during the war itself and which has emerged from it strengthened as well as self-confident. As early as 14 May, The Times, as we will see, thought the war had awoken the British people from their lethargy. On 5 April it had asserted that, ‘the national will to defend itself has to be cherished and replenished’. A month later, satisfied that the ‘will’ had stirred, the paper insisted that it had to be fed with victory. Speaking to the annual conference of the Scottish Conservatives at Perth, a week before the British landings, Thatcher herself felt ‘this ancient country rising as one nation …. Too long submerged, too often denigrated, too easily forgotten, the springs of pride in Britain flow again.’ Sir Julian Amery had helped to set the tone with his intervention in the House of Commons debate on 20 May, the day before the British landing, at San Carlos bay.

  What is at stake in the Falkland Islands crisis transcends the immediate issues of the Falkland Islanders and our own stake in the South Atlantic. The crisis is a catalyst of the basic values of our society; what Henry Kissinger has referred to as ‘honour, justice and patriotism’. … What is happening is not jingoism or war hysteria. It is the expression of a proud and ancient nation and of the most mature democracy in the world.

  What more needs be said? Kissinger, the man who cabled Nixon to ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb’, is a perfect source for the ethics of Great Britain’s moral re-armament, one which needs a real war to make it all the more complete. Until now chiliastic imperialists like Amery were not taken seriously, except as a gurgle of discontent on the back-benches of Westminster. Even the left used to look upon them with a kind of benevolence, as it seemed amusing to have a few of the old monsters around just as a reminder. Today, Amery’s views must be listened to with a different sort of attention: he himself may remain as marginal as ever, but his attitudes are remarkably close to the ruling spirit of Thatcherite government. After the San Carlos bridgehead had been established, the Economist (29 May) took up the same theme:

  If the cooly professional British forces now on East Falklands bring the Argentine forces in Port Darwin and Port Stanley to an early recognition that they are beaten, there will be a surge of self-confidence within the British nation which could have great and lasting effects.

  Leaving aside the multi-national complexity of the UK, what kind of nation is it that should need such a shot in the arm? Why should pushing a bullied, conscript army under the command of a notorious killer, from terrain few have desired to inhabit, be the source of ‘great and lasting benefit’? Who could wish for a ‘great surge’ from such an unnecessary event?

  There is both a recognition and a blindness to the somewhat fervid, desires of The Times and the Economist, of Amery and Thatcher. They are justified in feeling that something is wantonly wrong in the UK. The country’s economic achievement is well below its potential. But they are blind to the impediments that have created and reinforced the blockage. How could it be otherwise when they are themselves spokesmen and women of one aspect of the impediment itself? They can hardly be expected to admit that they are themselves part of the problem rather than the country’s saviours. Of course, I am over-simplifying. It is not the individuals themselves who are responsible, even collectively in the House of Commons, so much as an inherited, preserved and still energetic, institutional culture and economic orientation; one that impinges well beyond the political centre to the role of finance capital, the structure of industry, overseas investment and the labour movement.

  It is difficult to explain this exactly without a full account of contemporary Britain. Despite the present recession and record unemployment, by no means everything has gone from bad to worse since 1945—there have been marked cultural and economic improvements. But the place of the British state in world affairs has rapidly diminished, just as its relative standard of living has fallen well behind its European neighbours. To take just one example of the UK’s global position: at the beginning of the century, Britain produced a third of the world’s exports of manufactures. Towards the end of the 1930s, this had fallen to nearly a fifth but rose again after the war to reach 25% by 1950. In the 1970s, however, the figure fell below 10% with no prospect of recuperation. One might argue that for a country of 50 million to have 9% of the world’s exports in manufactures is more than adequate. But to a political class unable to accept such a status, the decline of Britain’s world position is a blow to its ‘natural’ sovereignty (defined as it has to be in global terms). This apprehensive class seeks a way of ‘pulling’ the country out of its decline without abandoning its own world pretensions. This is the sublimated attraction of the Dunkirk spirit… (a favourite of Harold Wilson’s). A turnaround is sought in which all ‘pull together’, and the institutions are preserved.

  The idea that there was nothing serious holding the country back was captured in Wilson’s election slogan of 1964: ‘Let’s Go With Labour’—now beyond irony. But his modernism turned out to be a veil which hid from sight his attachment to the old. Wilsonism foretold a ‘technological revolution’. The unmasked archaicism of much of British life made his costume seem especially attractive. Yet by emphasizing the fripperies of history, Wilson ensured that he could leave untouched the central institutions of a retrograde order. In particular, he sacrificed Labour’s social programmes to ensure that Britain met its financial ‘obligations’ overseas.1 He refused to devalue the pound and condemned his administration to years of exchange crises. So Wilson turned to trade-union legislation for political salvation. But he was unable to ensure Labour Party backing and had to abandon his proposals, revealingly entitled ‘In Place of Strife’. The episode contributed to his electoral defeat in 1970 and, with a strong supporting media chorus, helped to ensure the fetishization of the issue. Undoubtedly, embattled labour relations are a contributory factor to the UK’s economic demise, even if they originated in the first place from its backward capitalism. But, however important, they are not the root problem taken on their own. They were projected into a central symbol of the British crisis in the 1960s and 1970s with an intensity that spoke of displacement, and this fixation on the unions diverted attention from equally critical problems, thereby contributing further to the general malaise.

  When Heath replaced Wilson in 1970, his Government passed anti-union legislation and at the same time took Britain into the Common Market. Once more a ‘magical’ solution outside of the sovereign institutions themselves was conjured up to do the work of domestic transformation. Heath supposed that industry would be redirected and invigorated by its European context, while being liberated from the shackles of trade-union power.2 Instead he was driven from office in a shambles of domestic conflict brought to a head by the second miners’ strike. The fundamental reason for Heath’s defeat in February 1974 was that he had launched perhaps the most far-reaching assault on the Churchillist inheritance, without adequately explaining what he was doing (indeed, there may be no rhetoric currently available in British politics to articulate such a programme). At any rate, when he announced in 1970 ‘we were returned to office to change the course of the history of this nation—nothing less’,3 Heath was hardly greeted with acclaim.

  In the closing days of the February 1974 election, which Heath called to defeat the second national miners’ strike, his campaign was hit by three blows: first, Enoch Powell, though saying he would die a Tory, announced that he would vote Labour and called on others to do likewise, because at least the Labour Party promised a referendum on the EEC and thus the possibility of a British withdrawal from it. Second, the head of the Confederation of British Industry said that the Industrial Relations Act should be repealed—the capitalists themselves disliked Heath’s rigid labour legislation. Meanwhile a record trade deficit of nearly £400 million for January 1973 helped to undermine the credibility of Heath’s economic transformation, made particularly painful by the year’s 20% increase in food prices.4 Heath’s failure was a decisive event and it opened the way to Thatcher as well as to the Wilson/Callaghan go
vernments which her’s would replace. Each government since Heath has sought retrogressive solutions to a crisis which had been greatly exacerbated by Heath’s domestic fiasco.

  In contrast to Heath’s ‘abrasiveness’, Wilson now openly presented himself as a social conservative. He repealed the labour legislation and introduced a Social Contract. This was an attempt to codify publicly the relationship between the state and the labour movement, so crucial to Churchillism. But his attempt to make the understanding explicit was the harbinger of its destruction. Deftly retiring from office, Wilson was succeeded by Callaghan who was obliged to accept a conditional IMF loan while monetarist policies were introduced by his Chancellor, Denis Healey. If Wilson’s answer to the crisis was to blame the Tories for being disruptive and to reassert the neo-corporatist formula of 1940, Callaghan tried to finessse the debacle of the Social Contract by following the example of Macmillan after Suez. He manoeuvred with flair and presented the image of a man for whom nothing was really out of sorts. The problem with such a pose, of course, is that it needs a fawning media to appear convincing. Callaghan did not have this, and when significant numbers of the working class voted for Thatcher in 1979, they did so because they knew that something was wrong.